Hello! Welcome back to another episode of Make Thrift Buy! And as always, this is the
show where YOU send in items of clothing or accessories that you’ve seen on the internet,
and then I do my best to recreate them. Now a couple of people have challenged me to try
and do ombre tights! I've actually owned a pair of these back in the day – but this
was back in 2012, and, let’s be honest – most tights do NOT last for 4 whole years. Which
definitely makes spending $20-$50 on a pair of ombre tights – which is what I found
these kind of tights online for – pretty prohibitive for most of us.
So, I’m going to try and make some ombre tights for myself!
Let's get started!
Okay, the obvious things that I needed for this project were:
- Thick white tights - And dye.
I’m using this Rit dye which is made for synthetic material, which is what you will
need if you’re dying something like tights.
Alright, so! Welcome to my kitchen, which is where I will be doing my dyeing.
The first thing I did here was to rinse out any “finishes” from my tights by soaking
them in cold water for about 5 minutes.
Another thing that I’m going to need for dyeing the tights is a large, stainless steel
pot. Now… I just wanted to cut in and say right now – check back in at the end with
me about this; I don't think that it's a particularly good idea to use a pot that you're planning
on using for cooking later on, but I'll go through that in a bit.
Anyway, I filled the pot about 1/3rds with water, and I turned my stovetop on to a medium
setting so that my water would heat up to around 75 degrees Celcius, or 167 Fahrenheit.
I also put some gloves on so I wouldn’t dye my hands orange, but in retrospect, rubber
washing-up gloves would be better than these so that you’re also protected from hot water
and potential burns.
Now, you DON’T want your water to boil. I got the water in the pot up to about 75
degrees Celcius, or 167 Fahrenheit.
And now, the dyeing begins!
So, with this dye you’re supposed to use about 1 bottle of dye per 2 pounds of fabric,
I guess if you want a really strong colour. But I only want to dye half my tights; I also
didn’t have scales... in the end I kind of figured out that I would need about 1/10th
of a bottle for one pair of tights.
And in this whole process, I'm not going to be particularly accurate - I'm just going
to kind of eyeball it as I go.
The first thing that I did was to put a really tiny amount of dye into my pot – so about
a couple of spoonfulls – and then I mixed it around.
Then, I took my soaking tights out of the sink, wrung out the water, and carefully plopped
them into the pot for literally about 20 seconds. This will dye the entire tights a kinda pastel
peach colour, which will hopefully make the ombre more subtle later on. While doing this,
I held the top end out so that I didn't burn my hand, and I also tried to mix them around
a bit so that the dye would get to every part of the tights.
And then, I dumped them straight
back into that cold water, rinsed the dye out, and then I wrung the water out.
Then, I tipped quite a bit more dye into the pot, and I mixed it around.
Now, here I’ve set up two pots. This pot will be for the half of the tights that I
don't want to dye anymore, while this pot will be for the other half of the tights that
I do want to dye a stronger colour. So I put the top half of the tights – the part that’s
going to remain light-coloured, into this empty pot. Then, I carefully put the rest
of the tights, from the toes up to about just under halfway, into the dyeing pot.
Then, I carefully stirred the fabric around, to make sure that the dye is getting to all of
the fabric!
And then, after they were in for about 30 seconds, I pulled the tights out about 1 inch.
Then, I stirred, waited another 30 seconds, pulled them out about 1 inch, stirred, waited
30 seconds and pulled them out another inch.
After doing this a few times, it’s time to add more dye to get a stronger orange as
we move further down the tights to create that nice gradient ombre effect.
So, I poured in a couple more tablespoons… or so?, stirred to mix the dye evenly, and
then I immediately pulled the tights out one inch. Then, I stirred, and I waited about
1 minute this time, and then I pulled them out yet another inch.
Then, I poured in more dye, stirred, then left the tights to sit for about 30 seconds
this time, pulled them out about an inch, and then finally, I left the very tips of
the tights to soak for about five minutes.
When the five minutes was up, I carefully removed the tights from the dye bath and brought
them over to my stainless steel sink.
In my sink, I immediately rinsed the tights with cool water. Now – this is important
– I rinsed the tights with the coloured bit at the bottom and the lighter part at
the top. I didn’t want the dye to run back up the tights into the lighter sections, so
it’s important that I rinsed them this way! I stopped rinsing once the water running off
the tights is clear.
Then, according to the Rit Dye instructions, I needed to handwash the entire thing again
using mild detergent in warm water. Then I rinsed them off again in cool water, and FINALLY,
I let them dry, by hanging them up like this so that the dyed parts are at the bottom.
Now, I had a bunch of dye left so I also decided to also try and refresh a scuzzy old pair
of white tights that I have owned for years, and also, a pair of white knee-high socks!
And with that, I was done!
So, how did I go?
[music plays]
So, that was it! My conclusion is: [scissor snipping sound effect]
Alright – the issue of using a cooking pot to dye things. Now, I had googled this really
briefly before starting the whole dyeing process and the Rit website themselves said that it
was okay to use a cooking pot as long as you cleaned it really well with bleach afterwards,
so I was like "great! Let's go then!"
It was only afterwards that I did some more googling and um – scared myself a little
bit with stuff that other websites said – because lot of other websites said that you should
NOT be using this pot again for cooking.
So, you know, to be safe, probably don't use a pot that you plan to cook food in afterwards!
That's my disclaimer.
So yeah - I totally ruined our one good big cooking pot. Oops!
This was the first time I ever used fabric dyes before and – apart from the whole ruining-my-good-cooking-pot
thing – this was a really easy project!
The total cost of the first pair of tights came out to about $10, and the pair of tights
and socks that I already owned even cheaper still – and after doing three pairs I still
have about 2 thirds of this bottle left! And now, I pretty much want to dye everything
ombre. What are some other synthetic materials that I'd be able to dye orange? If you think
of any, let me know in the comments down below!
And I now have a designated dyeing pot as well. Yay!
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Thank you all so much for watching and I’ll see you all next time! Bye!